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Educators at a New York City school created a new program this year to help improve classroom behavior among students in a fourth-grade inclusion class. Co-teachers Kate Gutwillig and Priscilla Wong started a reading-buddy program, in which the fourth-grade students were paired with first-graders for twice-weekly sessions aimed at offering the fourth-graders a chance to assume leadership roles and experience the difficulties involved in teaching.

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A Texas elementary school is building students' writing skills through twice-weekly lessons in which fourth-grade students mentor first-grade peers. Vocabulary and writing skills among younger students have improved while the older students benefit through reinforcing their own skills and finding gaps in knowledge.

Fourth-graders at a Kansas elementary school have been using batting averages and other data from the World Series to learn math. Students have used the data to create graphs and predict who would win the series based on the statistics.

Fourth-graders through high-school seniors with visual disabilities learned about animals, physics and geology at a special Utah camp meant to encourage students with visual disabilities to consider science careers. "We hope students will gain confidence that they too can participate and succeed in science, technology, engineering and math," said Marla Palmer, the president of the Utah Parents of Blind Children, who helped organize the daylong camp.

Pairing fourth-graders with seven kindergartners with autism has helped a Pittsburgh school better integrate the youngsters, who are part of an autism program that aims to prepare them for a mainstream first-grade classroom. The fourth-graders take turns helping the younger students and treat them like friends or siblings, teachers said.

A majority of eighth- and fourth-grade students in nine of 10 major U.S. cities surveyed lacked the appropriate skills and reasoning to learn science, read charts or follow experiments, a study of 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress science test scores found. The study also revealed that urban students' performance on the science test trailed national averages by significant margins.